Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-05-23

SnIS nOIIus hdu Tie
world never passed through the incan-
descent or igneous fluid condition the
animal or plant could not yield these
carbon products to-day. The fact theL
that organic matter does yield them b. q
spontaneous distillation simply reminds
US of q former all-potent and Identical
process. Each process is simply COM
bustion or reduction of the same COM
pounds-one from organic, the other
from inorganic matter"
"And this proves what?"
"The plant distillstion tells US plainly
by its puny efforts to form hydro-carbon
that the infant earth did the same thing
on
AN IMMENSELY GRANDER SCALE.
Carbon is universal element, and we see
by numerous examples around US that in
all fires in which it is involved allotropiC
forms of carbon result Let me repeat,
then, that it is utterly impossible that the
burning earth should not have produced
them in almost infinite quantities. The
plant, for instance, derives its carbon
from the atmosphere in the form OF car
bonic anhydride, and although this is now
derived largely from the organic world,
it is plain that it was not 80 derived be-
fore plant and animal existed. Conse-
Quently, all the carbon now in the earth's
crust was originally derived from It's
primitive fires. Then the process by
which carbonic enhydride is formed from
the plant is simply the survival of q
greater and more competent process.
The question then is simply reduced to
this: Since organic distillation is neces-
sarily secondary process, and the prlm-
tive fires,
TITANIC AND MBASURELESS,
which of these were competent to pro-
duce the immensely of hydro IN
the earth's crust? II we ignore the pri-
meval source, then we espouse the pau
perated survival as the more competent
one"
"What is proven by the oil-bearing
rocks?"
admitting all the while that a dis
tillation of organisms under proper
treatment yields oil and gas, it is quite
another thing to admit that these organ
ismS were so fsvoTably arranged and so
abundartly supplied "a ever to s4turate g
rock to an appreciable degree, much les,
to make the earth q mighty store-house
of it filed to Tepletion. When an
animal or plant dies or dec&ys the
very elements that go TO form
hydrocarbons are the first to be
oissociated and pass into the air, and
the chemist actually knows of no natural
or scientific process by which they are,
or ever were, arrested and looked in rock
formations. Only the unCOnsumed parts
could remain as available in latter dis
tillatiOn, and as the unCOnsumeu carbon
arises as smoke from q furnace is con
sumed IN the air, and only remains IS
scot, uIburned, when confined from that
UNIVERSAL DEVoURER,
oxygen, so only that part of the animal
or plant organism that escapes decay or
combustion can remain as unbUrned or
available elements for Oil or gas. Ii
seems apparent, then, that & very meager
amount Of such matter could remain IS
oiI-producing, and we are forced to look
to That all-competent source, the igueCus
or burning earth, as the only philOsOphic
one"
"Whereln does the Annular Theory
sustain these views?"
81 have shown in the STORY of the
Rocks (first and second chapters), how
all these primitive Installations neces-
sarily assumed the annular or ring
from about the earth, forming
system similar to that which now
attends the planet Saturn. 1t is impos-
sibie for me to press this feature further
in the present connection, than 30 urge
my claim that annular or ring formation
is necessary and universal result of the
evolution of world from the igneous or
sun-state This is susceptible Of the
clearest mathematical proof. 1t is also
readily proved, as Will be seen by my
Goal Problem pages % to 400, that
these
CARBON OSCILLATIONS
returned to the earth by wey of the polar
regions. We will now apply these con-
sideratiOns 20 the oil and gas problem.
The primitive carbon dust and oily hydro
carbon which existed in the earth's annu-
lar system, in falling to the earth were
carried to the seas, and were there as
sorted Just as any other sediment. The
oily carbOns, having an affinity for clay
and some other impurities floating in
water, unite with them and sink. Vast
quantities of oil thus floating on water in
hundreds of rivers and on the surface Of
ponds are thus made to disappear and
settle in beds and strata, and many
of the overcoming beds in streams ada
cent to oil wells are actually oil-bearing,
SIS any one can verify. Again, in moving
water, the heavy carbons would separate
and settle in lower beds; the lighter
would float higher and
SETTLE on ELEVATIONS
in the sea bottom. 1t is plain, then, that
in the asserting Of carbons in the sea the
heavy would sink into depressions of the
sea floor, and the lighter would fall upon
elevations. The former would, under
conditions of heat and pressure,
be made to yield oil; the latter under the
same condition would yield gas. Now,
it is well known that when well termin-
ates on an elevation or an antiClinal of
an oil-bearing bed, the outflow is one of
gas rather than oil. On the other hand,
if well be drilled into depression of
the same bed, there is flow of oil rather
than gas. Some attempt TO explain this
by supposing that gas rises into the higher
from the lower field. 1t is plain, how
ever, that if the gas rises or is forced
from one bed into the other, it must
force whatever occupies the latter from
its home to another region, which region
was also occupied by something else, for
we cannot conceive of the interstices of
porous rock unoccupied, and the very fact
that the gas was forced into the higher
rock by eXpelling that which had occu-
pied it from the earth into the air, is
conclusive enough that the gas would
escape into the air by the same channel"
"But would not this be inconsistent"